Best/Worst Hotels or Hotel Experiences

Forgive me if this is already a topic, but the idea just came to me out of the blue as I was recalling what my family commonly refers to as the “Quality Inn disaster of ‘08”, or in other words the reason why we haven’t stayed at a budget hotel since. I just thought it’d be interesting to hear some of your best, worst, or just plain funny hotel experiences. Here are some of mine:

Best:
Staybridge Suites (Oconomowoc, WI)
Positives: Great service, brand new hotel, nice rooms

Negatives: More or less in the middle of nowhere, in an industrial park.

DoubleTree Chicago Maginficent Mile (or something like that)

Positives: Great service, modern enough, neat high-rise design, great area, awesome vintage FA system

Negatives: Pricey, a little on the dated side for a Hilton property

Worst:

Quality Inn (Black River Falls, WI)

Positives: None. Zero. I can’t think of a single one.

Negatives (told to me by my parents): Dated, smelled of cigarettes, dirty, horrible service, loud

That’s about it. If I can think of any other exceptionally good/bad hotels I’ll share them.

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I’ve stayed in the Magnificent Mile DoubleTree many times over the years. Was always great IMO. Another great one in Chicago is the Embassy Suites on Columbus Drive. As a little kid I loved staying there for some reason. Now living down here, typical 4-story suburban hotels, not bad if you don’t go to the ones off the interstate; those are generally gonna be the ones with issues. I would mention one bad experience but I live in the same area now (this was when we were looking at houses in the area before moving here about three or so years ago) so I’m not going to for privacy (duh). There was a water leak during renovations on the fourth floor; whole place smelled like mold, water damage was extensive (entire rooms on three floors had to be completely gutted and rebuilt), not good.

Other than that I’ve never had a bad issue per se.

Now that I know you’ve stayed there I’ve gotta ask… did you ever have a chance to ride the earthquake simulator? :lol:
I’ve also stayed there a ton of times; probably close to two dozen over the past eight years or so.
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What did that DoubleTree have for alarms? Sounds like it’s better than the Springfield, Vt. Holiday Inn Express, which does or had Edwards pullstations that looked older than old school, said “LOCAL” at the swimming pool and probably the exercise room. They have or had Wheelock MTs at the swimming pool and exercise room, meh at best… (Back in 2008 and around there)

Fast foward to July 27, 2016:

I spent the night there and saw a SpectAlert Advance in the hallway proximity, probably a P2W or P4W…

The DoubleTree had a Cerberus Pyrotronics system (not sure of the exact panel), with primarily Wheelock ET-1080-WS speaker/strobes and ET-1080 speakers in the rooms. Somewhat recently many of the rooms were remodeled and received Wheelock E-70 speaker/strobes, although most of the old system remains.

I love DoubleTree hotels. The cookies are so good

My favorite is most of the decent ones by Marriot.